Its a long time since we had a night onboard as hot as last night. After eating at Weatherspoons in town we returned to the boats and opened all the doors and hatches. The evening entertainment consisted of swatting the Mozzies with the electronic zapper before we hung anti mozzie net over the hatches, I still ended up with several bites. We left the doors open with the nets all night and I still found a mozzie in the bed this morning.
We were booked through Stanground lock at 1 pm today and it is about a 2 hour cries from Whittlesey to the lock so no great rush to get away, The boat ahead left quite early and another boat came up the locks and passed us so we set off just before 10 am. The only place we met another boat was on a blind bridge and bend just on the outskirts of Whittlesey, he saw my bow before I could see him and held back for me which settled him well in the mud. I hung around until he was away again in case he needed a pull backwards into the slightly deeper water, but he was soon away.
We arrived at Stanground at 11 30 am. a bit early so I wondered up to the office to find a relief keeper on duty. He checked my details in the book and said we may as well go through, I think he only had one more boat to come today, so by mid day we were on the Nene.
First job was to top up with water, while we were doing this we had a chat with Paul of Waterway Routes http://www.waterwayroutes.co.uk/ who kindly gave me one of his maps on CD. He has spent the past few weeks covering all the Middle Level, Gt. Ouse and connected waterways including the New Bedford River to produce a new set of maps and guides of the area.
After that it was off upstream arriving at Orton lock just as a boat had left, on the Nene the locks are left empty with the gate up, so its ready for boats traveling upstream to enter, but you do have to raise the gate when you leave. We arrived at the next lock just as a Narrowboat was leaving, but another arrived from above before we were ready to go so we could just sail off and leave them to it. We arrived at Waternewton Lock just as the Narrowboat ahead had finished lowering the gate, so they kindly lifted it again so we could share the lock.
When we arrived at the EA moorings at Wansford Station there was already one Narrowboat moored up but we were able to slip on behind him with the stern moored to a fencing post on the bank, the bows against the floating pontoon. As it was such a nice evening we had a BBQ in the picnic area above the moorings, This is maintained by the Nene Valley Railway http://www.nvr.org.uk/ Just as we were about to eat a Narrowboat called “Dream Keeper” came downstream looking for mooring so we invited them to come alongside. About 8 pm, a second boat came along and they are moored outside the boat in front.
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